Plague of Pythons

supposed to build was no proficiency test; this was for real. The more he puzzled over it the less he could understand of its purpose. There was a transmitter and there was a receiver. Astonishingly, neither was directional: that ruled out radar, for example. He rejected immediately the thought that the radiation was for spectrum analysis, as in the Caltech project⁠—unfortunate, because that was the only application with which he had firsthand familiarity; but impossible. The thing was too complicated. Nor could it be a simple message transmitter⁠—no, perhaps it could, assuming there was a reason for using the submillimeter bands instead of the conventional, far simpler short-wave spectrum. Could it? The submillimeter waves were line-of-sight, of course, but would ionosphere scatter make it possible for them to cover great distances? He could not remember. Or was that irrelevant, since perhaps they needed only to cover the distances between islands in their own archipelago? But then, why all the power? And in any case, what about this fantastic switching panel, hundreds of square feet of it even though it was transistorized and subminiaturized and involving at least a dozen sophisticated technical refinements he hadn’t the training quite to understand? AT&T could have handled every phone call in the United States with less switching than this⁠—in the days when telephone systems spanned a nation instead of a fraction of a city. He pushed the papers together in a pile and sat back, smoking a cigarette, trying to remember what he could of the theory behind submillimeter radiation.

At half a million megacycles and up, the domain of quantum theory began to be invaded. Rotating gas molecules, constricted to a few energy states, responded directly to the radio waves. Chandler remembered late-night bull sessions in Pasadena during which it had been pointed out that the possibilities in the field were enormous⁠—although only possibilities, for there was no engineering way to reach them, and no clear theory to point the way⁠—suggesting such strange ultimate practical applications as the receiverless radio, for example. Was that what he had here?

He gave up. It was a question that would burn at him until he found the answer, but just now he had work to do, and he’d better be doing it.

Skipping lunch entirely, he carefully checked the components lists, made a copy of what he would need, checked the original envelope and its contents with the man at the main receiving desk for his safe, and caught the bus to Honolulu.

At the Parts ’n Plenty store, Hsi read the list with a faint frown that turned into a puzzled scowl. When he put it down he looked at Chandler for a few moments without speaking.

“Well, Hsi? Can you get all this for me?” The parts man shrugged and nodded. “Koitska said in three days.”

Hsi looked startled, then resigned. “That puts it right up to me, doesn’t it? All right. Wait a moment.”

He disappeared in the back of the store, where Chandler heard him talking on what was evidently an intercom system. He came back in a few minutes and slipped Chandler’s list into a slit in the locked door. “Tough for Bert,” he said. “He’ll be working all night, getting started⁠—but I can take it easy till tomorrow. By then he’ll know what we don’t have, and I’ll find some way to get it.” He shrugged again, but his face was lined. Chandler wondered how one went about finding, for example, a thirty megawatt klystron tube; but it was Hsi’s problem. He said:

“All right, I’ll see you Monday.”

“Wait a minute, Chandler.” Hsi eyed him. “You don’t have anything special to do, do you? Well, come have dinner with me. Maybe I can get to know you. Then maybe I can answer some of your questions, if you like.”

---

They took a bus out Kapiolani Boulevard, then got out and walked a few blocks to a restaurant named Mother Chee’s. Hsi was well known there, it seemed. He led Chandler to a booth at the back, nodded to the waiter, ordered without looking at the menu and sat back. “You malihinis don’t know much about food,” he said, humorously patronizing. “I think you’ll like it. It’s all fish, anyway.”

The man was annoying. Chandler was moved to say, “Too bad, I was hoping for duck in orange sauce, perhaps some snow peas⁠—”

Hsi shook his head. “There’s meat, all right, but not here. You’ll only find it in the places where the execs sometimes go.⁠ ⁠… Tell me something, Chandler. What’s that scar on your forehead.”

Chandler touched it, almost with surprise. Since the medics had treated it he had almost forgotten it was there. He began to explain, then paused, looking at Hsi, and changed his mind. “What’s the score? You testing me, too? Want to see if I’ll lie about it?”

Hsi grinned. “Sorry. I guess that’s what I was doing. I do know what an ‘H’ stands for; we’ve seen them before. Not many. The ones that do get this far usually don’t last long. Unless, of course, they are working for somebody whom it wouldn’t do to offend,” he explained.

“So what you want to know, then, is whether I was really hoaxing or not. Does it make any difference?”

“Damn right it does, man! We’re slaves, but we’re not animals!” Chandler had gotten to him; the parts man looked startled, then sallow, as he observed his own vehemence.

“Sorry, Hsi. It makes a difference to me, too. Well, I wasn’t hoaxing. I was possessed, just like any other everyday rapist-murderer, only I couldn’t prove it. And it didn’t look too good for me, because the damn thing happened in a pharmaceuticals plant. That was supposed to be about the only place in town where you could be sure you wouldn’t be possessed, or so everybody thought. Including me. Up to the time I went ape.”

Hsi nodded. The waiter approached with their drinks. Hsi looked at him appraisingly, then did a curious thing. He gripped his left wrist with his right hand, quickly,